For people not from the Midwest, tornadoes are uniquely terrifying. Don’t get me wrong, anything that unpredicatble and destructive is definitely scary, but when you grow up here, it’s just kind of a way of life. We start doing tornado drills in kindergarten or sooner: go to the lowest interior hallway, put your head between your knees and your hands over your head. (This is also a good way to squeeze out a stuck fart.)
You do not even consider buying a home here that doesn’t have a basement. Oh, it will flood at some point. They all do. But you tolerate that inconvenience to reduce your chances of getting sucked into a giant vacuum of death. Tornado fatalities almost always originate from trailer parks, where no one has a basement. I don’t have the exact number on this, but I’m pretty sure mobile home residents comprise between 62 and 93 percent of tornado-related deaths.
In my more than 3.5 decades in the heartland, I have never been in a tornado. For that, I am grateful. I have been very, very close, though, and this past week was one of those times. The local weather people had been warning us for a couple of days that things could get nasty.
(Side note: The Midwest is every meteorologist’s dream location. We had one who left a local station for somewhere in the south, got bored about reporting that it was hot and humid every day and came back because weather is so much more exciting and variable here. You can talk about blizzards AND tornadoes within weeks of each other. And it seems like nothing gets TV weather people off more than chasing them there twisters.)
Anyway, so the day comes, and everyone is saying, “stay weather aware!” Which basically means don’t get so absorbed binge-watching Netflix that you don’t notice anything until your roof starts blowing off. Then evening comes. Everyone gets home from work and school, and all the local TV stations have gone wall-to-wall weather coverage. That’s when you know shit’s about to get real, if not for you, then for someone in a podunk town that is apparently 20 miles away but that you’ve never heard of. (Again, I don’t have the exact stats, but I’d say tornadoes prefer towns with populations of less than 1,000 81 percent of the time.)
So we’re watching it, and they say one is on the ground, it’s a mile wide, and it’s heading RIGHT FOR US. At this point, I start getting texts from friends, my boss and a phone call from my mom. Every one of them wanted to ensure I was aware of the tornado’s predicted path and that everyone in my family was wearing shoes. Again, this is something you know in the Midwest: wear good shoes if the twister’s coming your way. Because you don’t want to climb out of the rubble of your house barefoot or in heels. This is why I changed out of my biz-cas work clothes and into a T-shirt, jeans and tennis shoes.
You don’t want to totally dress down, though, because what if the TV reporters come by afterward to ask you what the tornado sounded like? (Hint: a train. It always sounds like a train.) I’m just kidding. They’re not going to ask someone who consciously thinks about what to wear. They will interview the woman in the trailer park in the podunk town who probably isn’t wearing a bra.
Anyway, so we activated our tornado plan, which basically entails the following and is mostly ad hoc:
- Literally herd cats (into the basement)
- Change everyone into sturdy clothes and shoes that are still TV-worthy
- Grab flashlights, candles, a lighter and weather radio in case the power goes out - take to basement
- Take phone chargers to basement in case power stays on but we’re trapped down there and need to call 911 and/or post our tornado pictures to social media
- Big, thick blankets to put over us in case it bears down on our house and we need to protect ourselves from flying debris
- Entertainment for children
The entertainment for the children turned out not to be enough. Fortunately, our basement is finished, which meant we kept the TV going down there. The 6-year-old kept whining, “Why are we watching the news so much?!” At least he wasn’t scared, although I kept trying to convince him he should be. I gave up and played Paw Patrol for him on my computer while I watched the red arrows aiming for our house.
And then, as soon as the anxiety began, it was over. The tornado, which was later determined to be an EF-4 (a scale with which you are exceedingly familiar if you are a Midwesterner), lifted back up off the ground before it got to us. It later came back down about 30 miles away and spun off another twister near my parents’ house. But we were all fine. I realize I am incredibly fortunate. The people of Joplin, Mo., were not fortunate in 2011. No one around here will ever forget that one, which killed 160 people. People in Indiana and Ohio were not fortunate last week.
But tornadoes bring out an interesting side of Midwesterners. That we are almost comfortable with them makes us feel a little badass. Oh, you have a hurricane that you know is coming a week in advance with a predictable path? That’s cute, coastal states. Sometimes we get about a minute’s worth of a siren that may or may not be audible. For some, that’s the cue to get underground. For others, it is a different kind of siren - a siren song to stand on the porch and film it. The TV meteorologists are totally going to want this footage.
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